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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Mrs. Parma's

When a
place has a name like ‘Mrs. Parmas’, you expect it to be good at dishing up
parmigiana. Thankfully, this place doesn’t disappoint. Although the prices significantly
more expensive than you’d expect to see elsewhere (at $20+ a parma, compared to
the $8 or so I was willing to pay in my poor university student days) the
quality definitely shines through.

Their standard parmigiana menu offers a choice of three bases; chicken, veal and eggplant for the
vegetarians, with a variety of different toppings available. There’s the
standard combination of ham, cheese and tomato, to the bruschetta varietal for
vegetarians, to the "Parmageddon" for those who like their food spicy. They also serve other relatively standard pub dishes, including steak, pasta and even curries. I'd refer you to their online menu for their full list of food and drinks, but their site appears to be down.

Every few
months, a group of us from work head to this joint for a hefty dose of
chicken/veal/eggplant, but this time we’d decided to visit during the Good Beer
Week Festival. The boys had a great time trying the specialty beers on tap, not
that they don’t usually given the huge range of microbrewery beer Mrs. Parmas
has available.

Microbrewery Map

(Apologies for the terrible quality of the map - I didn't want to be too conspicuous about taking photos so you'll have to deal with the blur. Still, it gives an idea of the microbreweries from which Mrs. Parmas sources their beer.)

Being
somewhat of a special occasion, or week as it was, there was also a new topping
combination available – the Bratwurst. Consisting of bratwurst sausage,
sauerkraut and tomato chutney, the surprisingly spicy offering made a tasty and
interesting addition to the menu.

Chicken Bratwurst Parma

Don't you think the flag was a nice touch? The bratwurst was slightly spicy (in my opinion at least - one of my workmates offloaded some of his onto my plate because he couldn't handle it) and flavoursome. The best part of the dish was the sauerkraut as it added an interesting sour touch to the dish. The chutney was thick enough to hold a strong tomato flavour, but not so much to be dominating, and the chicken was tender. Overall, this was the best flavour combination I've ever had here, and I'm hoping that they keep it on the menu, as unlikely as that may be.

As you can see by the size of the dish, there's a lot of chicken/veal/eggplant. My chicken parma filled me up
enough that I didn’t feel like touching the complimentary potato chips,
although I did dig into the salad to get my daily dose of vitamins. Next time ,
I’ll probably have the eggplant parma as this is one of the few restaurants
that serve a decent vegetarian parmigiana. That’s to be commended as the first version
of the dish was made using eggplant, not chicken as is the standard pub offering
now days (according to Wikipedia at least).

The service is fast and friendly, and the busy restaurant caters well for small and large-ish (10 people) groups. If you want beer and a parma that's a level above average, then head over to Mrs. Parmas.